Un-known French New Wave

We are glad to invite you to second edition of 5/10 – screening of five short movies by New Wave directors. Choice of the films was made by professor Tadeusz Lubelski, the film historian and author of New Wave. French Cinema Adventure.

Oskar Wanat and Marcin Malecko: For this year’s edition of 5/10 you have chosen, inter alia, two well-known movies – Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon and Francoise Truffaut’s Antoine And Colette. What were you criteria with selecting the less popular ones? What do you find the most interesting for you and for festival’s audience?

Tadeusz Lubelski: It was Mr. Bogusław Zmudziński’s idea from about two years ago. Wewere going to present the ten best short movies from broadly defined New Wave current. Soon it turned out, that one screening is too short to show all the movies – so we decided to spread them across two festivals. Coming back to the question: in this set the actual masterpiece is Agnès Varda’s movie – ingenious, relatively unknown, standing somewhere between surrealistic creation and rebellious reconstruction of childhood.

OW and MM: If it is from the 80’s, can we still place it in a New Wave context?

TL: Yes, the whole Varda’s output comes from this culture. She is constantly making movies in New Wave style, not following the trends.

OW and MM: New Wave movies wielded a great influence in world’s cinematography, they are very meaningful now. We think, however, that there are less and less of young people watching them. What do you think those films can offer to young audience – the audience using the new media and living a whole different world? Is this former juvenility of New Wave movies capable of getting themselves noticed by XXI century’s youth?

TL: I would mention two categories, that complement each other and are still valid: subversiveness and formal thinking. Here we have both of them.

OW and MM: It is not a secret, that shorts are always overshadowed by feature movies. Do you think short movies from New Wave were important for development of this current?

TL: Yes, definitely. At first, for economical reasons. Before the famous advance for feature movies were implemented by cinematography system, it was much easier to get founds for short movie. In 1950’s New Wave creators were the people from behind the branch, bursting into a very hermetic cinematography of a big, West-European country. Through the short movies they were reaching to rights of their profession. Secondly, when they finally had the measures, they were learning the rules of cinema. Then some of them, like Malle or Truffaut, switched to full-length for good. But compulsive experimenters, like Godard or Varda, are still making short movies sometimes. Varda is actually a good example, because for all her life she has been making the films, that she needed at the moment. She does not fit time forms – she can afford that, because she is her own producer. When it is the best for her to make a film that lasts for 80 minutes – she makes a 80-minute film, when she needs 27-minute movie, she makes one, like 7 rooms. I saw that movie years ago in Wroclaw and I still remember it.

OW and MM: Do you have any special memory related to any of the others?

TL: Antoine and Colette came out as a first novella of international movie Love at twenty, that I saw in high school. I was kind of looking forward to Wajda’s novella, that was often mentioned in critics, but I knew at once, that Truffaut’s one is the best. Wonderful. It is a terrific short movie about youth – first job, first love, first hopes. Love turns out to be unrequited, as ever, but passion happens to be salvific. True enthusiasm of art can compensate all the personal failures. Looking at it from a distance I think this movie by self-taught Truffaut is mostly a commendation of the early accrued independence. It may be a right answer for your question about young people nowadays finding something attractive in these movies from fifty years ago.

5/10 – Second Top 5 of the best short films by the French New Wave authors as selected by professor Tadeusz Lubelski

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International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima

The oldest film festival in Poland confronting the achievements of students of film and art schools from around the world and the achievements of creators of artistic animation - both professionals, students and independent performers. The festival is crowned with the awarding of prizes in the following competitions: Etiuda, Anima and the youngest Anima.PL